This study examined the specificity of disgust sensitivity in predicting fear and disgust responses to exposure to a spider. Participants high (n=22) and low (n=28) in spider fear completed self-report measures of disgust sensitivity, contamination fear, anxiety, and negative affect. They then participated in a behavioral avoidance task (BAT) in which they were briefly exposed to a realistic-lo...

Men and women with dentophobia differ in specific fear contents and underlying brain activity during symptom provocation. Possible sex differences concerning other basic emotions, such as disgust, have undergone minimal investigation. Therefore, we recorded the facial electromyogram from the musculus levator labii (as a specific disgust indicator) and the heart rate of 36 individuals with dento...

OBJECTIVES For characterizing the association between parenting and offspring social phobia (SP), contrasting maternal vs. paternal contributions, putative predictors of unfavorable parenting behaviors and its specificity for SP are warranted to delineate targeted prevention and intervention strategies. METHODS A population-based sample of 1053 adolescents was followed-up using the M-CIDI. Pa...

BACKGROUND Childhood-onset eczema is a common condition associated with pruritus, sleep disturbance and disrupted quality of life. The mainstay of treatment is usage of emollients and topical corticosteroid (CS). Nevertheless, many steroid-phobic parents are very skeptical about western medicine that may contain CS. Furthermore, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is popular among Chin...

OBJECTIVE Imprecise conceptualizations of dissociation hinder understanding of trauma-related dissociation. An heuristic resolution for research and clinical practice is proposed. METHOD Current conceptualizations of dissociation are critically examined. They are compared with a new theory that incorporates classical views on dissociation with other contemporary theories related to traumatiza...

BACKGROUND Anxiety disorders occur commonly in schizophrenia but are often overlooked by psychiatrists. Their presence may compound the challenges faced by these patients and may contribute to poor outcome. OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of anxiety disorders among the participants with schizophrenia, and the association between this co-morbidity and disab...

OBJECTIVE To determine the accuracy of diagnoses made with artificial neural network techniques (ANNW) that identify postural sway patterns typical for balance disorders. METHODS Body sway was measured by means of posturography during 10 test conditions of increasing difficulty. From a database of 676 subjects 60 training cases (TCs) and 60 validation cases (VCs) were selected in which the fo...

BACKGROUND Vertigo and dizziness are often not fully explained by an organic illness, but instead are related to psychiatric disorders. This study aimed to evaluate psychiatric comorbidity and assess psychosocial impairment in a large sample of patients with a wide range of unselected organic and non-organic (ie, medically unexplained) vertigo/dizziness syndromes. METHODS This cross-sectional...

BACKGROUND Dimensional models of psychopathology demonstrate that two correlated factors of fear and distress account for the covariation among depressive and anxiety disorders. Nevertheless, these models tend to exclude variables relevant to psychopathology, such as temperament traits. This study examined the joint structure of DSM-IV-based major depression and anxiety disorders along with tra...

This study explored the ways in which people interpret visible physical symptoms of anxiety. A group of participants with social phobia (SP) and a nonclinical control (NCC) group completed either the Actor version or the Observer version of the Symptom Interpretation Scale (SIS), designed for the purposes of this study. The SIS asks participants to rate the extent to which each of eight interpr...